


Void 'N Out

by Cresstionmark



Category: Discord Murder Party (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22889731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cresstionmark/pseuds/Cresstionmark
Summary: "Should I get fries?""You should always get fries."Junior and Murder God find themselves at a Void 'N Out (Void In 'N Out), but getting a burger isn't the only thing they have to worry about. MG and the Awakened have a lot to think about as they try to get through this game of 2am munchies.Basically an excuse to do character study in a restaurant.  Don't ever ask me for anything ever again.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	1. Junior

“Welcome to Void ‘N Out, can I take your order?” is what Junior assumed the employee _would_ have said, if they weren’t a mass of horrors. The cashier was, however, a mass of horrors, so all he heard from them was a dissonant buzzing accompanied by the slight onset of a headache. 

“Give me a second, I’m thinking.” The Murder God replied in a less painful tone. Her eyes were trained on the Void ’N Out menu, her fingers curled at her mouth in thought as she scanned each option. She read so far, then cocked her head a bit and tapped her toes impatiently. Despite her small frame, and the abnormally large T-Shirt she was wearing at the time, she still gave off Karen energy. And even a mass of horrors did not want to deal with a Karen. 

“Junior, what are you thinking? Should I get fries?”

The answer to that was always yes, but Junior was a bit too distracted to answer even obvious questions. What he _was_ thinking about was how they had ended up at Void ‘N Out at such a time by themselves. The entire situation felt several degrees of bizarre to him, both in it’s oddity and the mundanity of it all.

First was the restaurant itself. The Awakened were no strangers to Murder God’s tendency to blatantly plagiarise material, and as such this was what Junior assumed to be an average everyday copy of an In ‘N Out Burger. Of course, he’d never been to specifically In ‘N Out, but he’d been to enough burger joints to recognise the smell of steak grease and restaurant ketchup (which had a bit more of a tanginess to it than store bought). In different circumstances, he would welcome the familiarity that came with such an environment. These were not different circumstances, and this knock-off In ‘N Out came with its own Void-y qualities  
  
“Junior? Junior. C’mon. Is it the eldritch shadow entities? I thought you’d be cool about that.”

He was doing his best to be cool about it. As she tended to do, however, Murder God had forgotten that Junior was still mostly human and very, very susceptible to eldritch energy. Every Void ‘N Out employee was made of nothing but a pure dark aura, which would just be normal food service if it weren’t for the fact that this dark aura was more physical than it was just the aching drops of a teenager’s dying soul. Each employee felt like a blur on the edge of Junior’s vision, and whenever he turned to directly focus on them, the more he’d try the more his head hurt. It would be filled with nothing but raging static, trying to process everything but registering nothing. Junior had stopped trying to look at the employees.

And Murder God had stopped trying to figure out her order. Junior hadn’t heard all of it, but he knew that he was taken aback by just how spicy her order had been. She had basically told them to pile on the most potent things from their menu, but as neatly as possible. Extra spices, extra seasonings, and all fresh. It wasn’t that she had ordered a lot of food, but such a concentration of flavour that it made Junior’s head spin just to think about.

And that was the other thing. The circumstance itself. _Why was he at an Eldritch In ‘N Out alone with the literal God of Murder?_ This was not how he expected his life to go in the slightest. Of course, his life had never gone as planned, but getting a burger with a god was at least a little out of left field. The whole thing was out of left field.

He had just been enjoying his time in the lounge as usual, or at least as much as he could given the circumstances, and then was snapped from his motel room into an entirely different motel room, inhabited by the Murder God. She had been wearing the same big T-shirt and boxer shorts that she was wearing in the burger chain later, which was sign enough that this wasn’t a typical call. He had noticed he was in more “comfy” attire as well, wearing his tank top and a pair of grey sweatpants.

It turned out that she had called him just to complain, citing him as “the least likely to give her shit while also not being Percy Blackwood,” and when he had asked about Thorin she said they were “adult problems.” Which concerned him at first, because he had no idea how to deal with most adult things, he had never done his own taxes, but MG’s were in his noted wheelhouse. It mostly involved complaining about people not liking her and having writer’s block and some poor guy named Francis she seemed to have fallen in love with but totally couldn’t feel comfortable about. This wasn’t exactly a cushy vent session, it was a lot of Junior nodding and agreeing while she claimed to have absolutely no actual problems that were her fault (any attempt he made to pipe in with an observation to the contrary was met with a scathing review of his own antics, so he eventually fell back into the wingman position), but it was a venting session all the same.

At some point they just ended up both sitting on the bed, MG with her who-knowsth glass of wine, when she suddenly stopped talking and just said  
  
“...You wanna get a burger?”

Junior blinked.

“This is the perfect time for a burger.”

So back to the Void ‘N Out.

He had spent so much time not looking at the employees that he hadn’t spent any looking at the menu, and having not been to any In ‘N Out chain, Void or otherwise, he had no idea what he wanted. Did he want fries? Of course he wanted fries, the question was did he want a shake to dip them in. But what about the burger? Didn’t one come to a burger joint for the burger? Or was it for the experience. Oh wait, he was at In ‘N O- er- Void ‘N Out. He should get something Jungle style. Zoo Style? No wait it had to be Tiger Style. Right. He’d be getting something Tiger Style. Junior opened his mouth to order, but the Black Stars certainly were not shining on him eating today, because a loud bang came from behind him.

“What the FUCK is going on here?” yelled Vincent Marshall Reid from the back of the establishment. He was accompanied by the other Awakened, who seemed their own various levels of perplexed.

“What is this? It wasn’t here a few minutes ago.” Grace said, entering the restaurant’s doors.

“An In ‘N Out? Here, Murder God? I thought you were classier than that. This is below even the Olive Pardon.” The Doctor followed.

“Is this a burger place? I think I smell ‘em. I haven’t had a burger in a hot minute!” Percy beamed.

“What is this ‘borger?’ “ questioned Valencia.

“What are those blobby...distant black things?” Tommy asked.

“Do not stare at them you will die.” Junior cut in. 

“Ah well fuck.” added the Murder God, not one to be pushed out of a bit.

“Yeah ‘well fuck’! Now, you didn’t answer me, so I’m gonna ask again: What the _fuck_ is going on here?” Vincent sidled up to Junior, all 5 feet and 8 inches of him carrying the intimidation of someone who actually matched Junior in size. “You just go missing and then suddenly there’s a goddamn burger joint 5 feet from the lounge?”

Junior looked over Vincent and out of the restaurant windows. The lounge was, in fact, across the street. Huh.

“Some of us thought you got...y’know...Christine’d” Tommy said, looking down.

Junior felt a rush of guilt, added to his usual constant stream of guilt, for having not even considered that. It wasn’t his fault he had been snapped away, of course, but Junior had a really bad compass when it came to what he should and shouldn’t feel bad about. So of course this was his fault.

“Well he seems to be doing quite fine. Comfortable, even.” Grace said, circling Junior’s person. She looked down at his sweatpants and gave a critical “huh” before backing up. “I, too, would like to know what you’ve been getting up to.”

So this was a pickle, and not one that was in a sandwich that Junior so desperately wanted to be eating. No, this was a very sour pickle that involved trying to navigate a question he didn’t even know the answer to. Who would believe that the god of murder had called him to a motel room during quiet hours to complain to him about her problems, then asked him if he wanted to go get a burger at Lovecraft’s idea of a burger joint? He had been trying to process all of that before this, and now he was being given a pop quiz? Think, Junior, think--

“Um, you see--”

“We were playing a game”

Junior snapped to attention as the words came from Murder God’s mouth. 

“A game? By yourselves?” Grace wasn’t going to give in so easily.

“Of course not by ourselves. This got you here, didn’t it?” Murder God said, matter of factly. “Sometimes I’d like for you guys to come to me, instead of getting picked on in my own lounge all the time. And now that everybody's here--”

She snapped her fingers, and everyone in the vicinity was suddenly in similarly comfy clothes. The place was filled with boxer shorts and sweatpants, t-shirts and tank tops. She lowered her hand, and Junior thought he saw just a twinge of a shake.

“We can get started.”


	2. Grace

The game was simple. They would be doing “tabletop roleplay” here in this “Void ‘N Out.” It would be something similar to the Dandy Mystical Plaza-- very little rolling of dice, if any, and more of a vacation for the Murder God. They would be in the restaurant for a certain amount of time, and were encouraged to interact with each other as much as possible. She said they could relax and take a break as well, if they so desired. Fuck it, the restaurant was their oyster.

Grace Garden didn't believe that for a single second.

There was too much here that just didn’t make sense, and not in the usual way that logic was constantly subverted. Usually, there were questions like “Why are there clowns?” and “Why does that clown have a knife?” and “Murder God do you have a thing for clowns?” but there were no clowns here--not yet-- and Grace would not be made one if anyone thought she didn’t notice. Even for lack of clown antics, and the addition of her new admittedly soft and baggy pants, there wasn’t the right amount of danger or intrigue or anything else that tended to come with the games. It was just a restaurant.  
  
And that made Grace’s skin crawl. Grace could tell that this game wasn’t planned, and she was going to sniff out what had actually been it’s catalyst.

Clearly Junior was the main suspect. Here, at a strange place? The moment it opened? Casually existing in the vicinity of their current greatest enemy? Only a few of the many uncomfortable boxes he checked. Sure, he pretended to be amicable and caring, cooking regularly and offering to help wherever he was needed, but Grace had worked with many killers before and would never let her guard down again. No one was that safe. They always came off amicable and caring to the people they wanted to deceive most. It wasn’t different for Junior, it wasn’t different for Thorin, and she was irritated that the others couldn’t see that.

They’d been tricked enough times, and yet here they were, once again, dawdling about, taking their leisure. 

Percy had run up to the counter before the game had even begun, a kid in a candy store. He was practically beaming as he excitedly told the ghastly cashier his order. Always a bit naive, always a bit of a child. Valencia followed after him, less enthused but following all the same, and ordered right after. Those two had basically been inseparable since Valencia’s Awakening, and Grace wasn’t the most keen on it. She had nothing against the two as individuals, but something about them constantly being together made her uneasy. Those kinds of things never ended up well. Romance had a way of going sour.

Just look at Tommy, she thought, doing just that--both in the metaphorical and literal sense. He was curled in his own booth in the back of the restaurant, head hanging low over the table, not so much as responding to anyone. He had been like that since the events of Thorin’s betrayal, growing further and further away with time. Grace looked back at her own table. That wasn’t something she could focus on right now.

Which brought her to McGillicutty, who was having a discussion with Vincent. The two of them were conversing near the cubicle marked “trash,” Vincent kneeling on it, gesturing with every sentence in the way that he always did, and the Doctor standing steadfast, but clearly also engaged in the conversation. 

There, if anywhere, existed a dichotomy of what Grace was and was not interested in. Grace Garden had surmised that Vincent Marshall Reid was who he said he was, for better or for worse. He was angry and snappy, but he would also have a drink with you if you so let him. He was everything he claimed to be, no more and no less, therefore she considered him solved.

But then there was the Doctor. The Doctor was nothing that Grace fully understood, and that made him all the more intriguing. There were things about him that even he didn’t know, and Grace was determined to find out about them. Who was Speed Racer, or Jeff Goldblum, or Hugh Jacough? Who was the pompous Frenchman that showed up ever so occasionally? Who was….well, no one cared about Mr. GcMillicutty, not even Grace. She definitely cared, however, about Stephen Cutter. She  _ really _ cared about Stephen Cutter. Incredibly polite, but, as some of her more contemporary compatriots would say, “completely off his balls,” she had been playing cat and mouse with this facet of McGillicutty in particular for what felt like eons. She kept running and running and not catching up.

These were the people she had spent so much time with, soon to be joined by many more, and even now she felt as though they were distant from her. Maybe she had gotten close at some point, but never as much as they seemed to be with each other. And maybe that was for the best? She admitted she may not be the most skilled at talking to people, and that was basically their entire job. Maybe they didn’t need her help, and even now as she was thinking on their weird quirks and habits, she was the defective one. Did they even want her around? The Doctor had told her that nothing was wrong with her, but even now that she was whole, she felt she was still missing some pieces.

Suddenly a tray came into view, eye level to Grace, a wrapped burger and half a box of fries in the corner of her eyes.

“Ya mawnd if weh sih’ ‘ere?” Percy tried to say around his mouth full of food. Grace must have made an odd expression, because he chewed and swallowed with a sheepish look on his face. 

“Sorry. Do ya mind if we sit here?”

Grace looked up at the boy and smiled, weakly.

“It’s fine.”   
  
Having been given the okay, Percy sat down on the other side of the booth, sliding his tray on the table and getting comfortable inside. He popped another fry into his mouth, and Grace eyed the process. Maybe it was that Percy’s attitude was slightly infectious but, oddly enough, just the act of eating together helped her body to relax. Maybe this was enough. Maybe this was what she needed.

She was about to offer Percy a napkin, when Valencia walked up to the table as well. Ah. Right. He had said “we.”

“I have gotten my “milkshake” Percy!” Valencia said, a note of triumph in her voice. She looked at Percy, then over to Grace. “ Is there room for one more?”

“Of course, Valencia!” Percy grinned. “Just sit here next to me!”

Grace prickled. The squeaky spokes of a misplaced wheel rang in her brain as Valencia sat down, and Grace stood up, slightly more abruptly than she intended.   
  
“Yes, it’s fine.” she said, turning away and standing next to the table briefly.

“I’m going to go order some food.” 

Grace breathed and began walking, alone, to the counter.


End file.
